Despite the lovely weather we have had recently, the temperatures around here reached 26 Celsius on several days, the wind was either non-existent or gusting force 6 or 7. neither of these conditions is suitable for sailing Naiad so I spend some time on the boat but mainly just being on the boat and the river. And drinking tea, of course.

One thing that I did make an effort on was the "gardening". One of the conditions of having a mooring with the DCC is that you keep the mooring in good condition including the bank between the river and the path. The "garden" that goes with my current mooring is a little rough and has a large lump of ivy growing on it which is pretty much out of control and starting to take over the entire waterfront.

You can just see the lump of ivy in the lower righthand corner of this photo as well as the fairly long grass.

So I took my strimmer to the grass and the bush cutter attachment to the clump of ivy. This turned out to be a wooden pot built like a barrel that was missing alternate staves and mostly rotten and a whole heap of ivy. It came up in one lump which very shortly floated down river with the wind and current! I may have to get some grass seed as the place where the ivy stood, covering more than half of the frontage, is bare of growth and it I don't get grass started there, I'll just get a load of weeds. I feel a trip to the local garden centre coming on.

Of course, I'll be pulling up ivy for months to come but if it gets too bad I'll use weedkiller on it.

Today there was a little wind, 2 gusting 3 was forecast but when I got down to the mooring just before 08:00 it was less than 1 but in the forecast direction of SW(ish). It didn't take me long to get the kettle on and while that was on the go I prepared for a sail.

Once the teapot was filled I pushed back out of the mooring, hoisted the main and staysail, dropped the centre plate and the rudder and set off up river. Once I had got going I unfurled the jib so we were sailing under full sail.

It didn't take long to pass the swan nest just upstream from the club and as I went by I saw that the nest was now unoccupied and the swans plus brood were on the other side of the river. The cygnets are already quite large so I think that they hatched shortly after I photographed them on my last outing.

The wind remained very light so I used the paddle to keep us going in the flat spots and soon arrived at the Ship Inn where I turned around and headed back. With such a light wind it was not worth the effort of trying to get through the wind hole further up river. The sail back did not require any paddling but did get a little slow in places.

I did, however, completely mess up getting back on to the mooring and only some frantic paddling prevented me from ending up on the other mooring, thankfully vacant. I really have to find a way of dealing with this. The mooring ropes are on the upstream side of the berth and also up wind since the prevailing wind is Southerly and I have to down sail before I get to the mooring or I'll be sailing up the bank.

Oh well, I had a nice sail and was back home about three hours after setting off. Now for the rest of the Saturday's jobs.